S.F. food banks struggle with major funding cuts

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Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Hundreds of people form a line snaking down the side of the building, many having arrived hours before. They're assigned numbers to ensure there's some semblance of order after fights began breaking out in line many months ago.

Once it's finally their turn, the mostly elderly people eagerly claim their prize: a bag of bread and some fruit and vegetables. It's the weekly, sometimes desperate handout at Hosanna Celebration Center, a Castro district church that disburses food from the San Francisco Food Bank each Tuesday at noon.

But under new criteria set by the national Emergency Food and Shelter Program, scenes like this, which play out daily in San Francisco, aren't enough to merit federal financial help. The city simply doesn't have enough poor or unemployed people to qualify, and it has just learned it will lose out on $592,000 in federal money that helps fund the food bank and other social service programs.

Funding for the national program was cut 40 percent by Congress in this year's budget - from $200 million to $120 million. For the first time in the program's 28-year existence, San Francisco won't get any of that money.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/19/BATO1KO7PR.DTL

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